If you’re reading this blog, I assume you’re a descendant of Penelope and Richard Stout and are familiar with her story and want to know more. I would love to discover the truth behind Penelope’s story but facts are scarce. I'll have to settle for conjectures.

Together, we can combine our incomplete knowledge and arrive at better conclusions. So please comment.

........ Conjecture, noun, the formation of judgments or opinions on the basis of incomplete or inconclusive information. Source: Encarta Dictionary

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Conjecture #3: Penelope and Richard Stout married in late 1648/early 1649.

When did Penelope marry Richard Stout? This date is often associated
with the date of the shipwreck but let’s save the shipwreck for next week and argue
these two controversial events independently.

Two Marriage Opinions: 1644 or
1648

The popular answer is circa 1644 and the minority opinion is soon after
the slander trial on 12 Sept 1648. Let’s deal with the minority opinion first
because its argument is simply that the trial record lists her name as
Penellopey Prince because she was a widow (See Conjecture #1) and thus hadn’t yet remarried. If she had
remarried, she would have been referred to the wife of Richard Stout or
possibly as Mrs. Stout.

The 1644 Argument

The argument for a marriage date of 1644 was introduced by Dr. John Stillwell in 1916 and relies
on A) the documented fact that the two eldest sons of Richard Stout (namely,
John and Richard, Jr.) were awarded full land grants of 120 acres based upon
residence in New Jersey before 1 Jan 1665 as adults, not minors, and assumption
B) that the sons were thus eighteen years of age in 1664. Because no one
suggests that Richard had sons from a prior marriage, assumption C) is that the
first son was born about one year after the marriage date of Richard and
Penelope and the second son between two and three years after the marriage
date.

A marriage date much earlier than 1644 is implausible because Gravesend
was settled in 1643, then abandoned because of Indian troubles and resettled in
1645. Also it is generally accepted (without proof) that Richard Stout arrived
in New Amsterdam around the spring of 1643.

Two Challenges to Majority
Opinion

I challenge the interpretation of both the date 1 Jan 1665 and the
legal age of eighteen.

The Concessions Document

The charter that the new governor of New Jersey brought with him in
1665 designating the requirements for land grants to settlers was a little more
generous than the one announced the same year for the Carolinas. The
concessions for New Jersey and Carolina had three things in common:
1. They encouraged rapid settlement by reducing the size of the land
grants in later years.
2. They required settlers to physically occupy the land to eliminate
speculators.
3. They gave the largest grants to heads of household, wives, and
able-bodied men ready and able to defend the colony against Indian attack and half-grants
to “weaker” servants.

The section of the New Jersey Concessions under which the Stouts
claimed land stated, “To every master or mistress that shall go before the
first day of January, which shall be in the year one thousand six hundred
sixty-five; one hundred and twenty acres of land. And for every able man
servant, that he or she shall carry or send, arm'd and provided as aforesaid” [which
an earlier section explained as arm'd with a good musket, bore twelve bullets
to the pound, with ten pounds of powder, and twenty pounds of bullets, with
bandiliers and match convenient, and with six months provision for his own
person], “ and arriving within the time aforesaid, the like quantity of one
hundred and twenty acres of land: And for every weaker servant or slave, male
or female, exceeding the age of fourteen years, arriving there, sixty acres of
land.”

Challenge #1: The Day After 31
Dec 1665 is 1 Jan 1665 According to Wikipedia
the English legal year began on March 25 until the conversion from the Julian
to Gregorian calendar nearly a century later in 1752. Therefore the legal date
of 1 Jan 1665 is the day after 31 Dec 1665, or 1 Jan 1666 as we would think of
it. To reduce confusion, a date between 1 Jan and 24 Mar was often written in
the format of 1 Jan 1665/66 but not in legal documents.

To further confirm the deadline of 1 Jan 1665/66, consider the
timeframe of relevant events, including the fact that the document itself didn’t
arrive in New York until July 1665:

8 Sept 1664—Col. Nicholls captured New Amsterdam for the English and
renamed it New York.
10 Feb 1664/65 – Lords Proprietors of New Jersey, John Lord Berkley and
Sir George Carteret (both of whom were also among the proprietors of the
Carolinas), signed the Concession and Agreements document with the 1 Jan 1665/66
deadline.
29 Jul 1665—the new governor Philip Carteret (relative of Sir George
Carteret) arrived in New York with the documents, the first English ship since
the conquest.

Aug 1665—Governor Philip Carteret accompanied the first settlers to found
Elizabethtown, the capital of New Jersey. These able-bodied settlers accompanying
the governor received 150 acres.
1 Jan 1665/66—deadline for other settlers to receive maximum land grants of
120 acres.

Challenge #2: Able Man Servant
or Weaker Servant

Secondly, how do you distinguish “able
man servant” from “weaker servant or
slave, male or female, exceeding the age of fourteen years”? I claim that a
“weaker servant” is one not “arm'd with a good musket, bore twelve bullets to
the pound, with ten pounds of powder, and twenty pounds of bullets, with
bandiliers and match convenient.” Thus, a weaker servant is anyone whom the
master would not trust with a musket, such as an African slave, a feeble old man,
or an untrustworthy servant brought along to claim and work the land, whereas an
able man servant is any male over the age of fourteen who can handle a musket. The
inclusion of slaves may seem odd but there were numerous slaves in New
Amsterdam/New York and the language was copied from the Carolina document intended to lure
slave-owning sugar planters from the Caribbean.

Also consider the history of Gravesend.
Attacked and burned by the Indians in 1643 before it was properly built. Resettled
in 1645 with a town charter that required residents to maintain a section of
the palisade wall and to stockpile musket, lead, and powder. In fact, a person
could not buy a lot in Gravesend without an armed, able-bodied man to live on
it. Plus the story about Tisquantum warning Penelope to flee from an impending
Indian attack. And the Peach War of 1655. In those circumstances do you think it
likely that a fourteen-year-old boy knew how to handle a musket?

4 comments:

Jim, this is excellent rationale. I had never looked into the terms of who was qualified to receive a full land grant. I assumed that perhaps they just fudged a bit, and said the boys were a bit older than they were to receive more land (after all, they were already settled there, and who is going to come around with a measuring stick and say, "wait a minute, this boy looks like he's under 18!"?)

I am confident that Penelope was unmarried as of her appearing in the court record of September 1648. If she had been married, this fact would have been mentioned (as it was with all other women who made appearances in court, noting them as "wife of ...", etc.); then again, if Penelope was so inclined to observe certain Dutch traditions, then perhaps she did not use her husband's surname, in which case, official records might continue to refer to her by her maiden name (but, here again we would have a contradiction, if her first husband was named Prince, she would have been using a previous married name and not her own surname! If she chose to use her maiden name--in the Dutch tradition--then this would suggest that her maiden name was actually "Prinse"-or something like it-and her first husband's name was something different.) But I don't think that's the case. At any rate, if Penelope were married when she appeared in court in 1648, the fact almost certainly would have been recorded, but it was not. She and Richard married after September 1868.

Family traditions claim (perhaps incorrectly) that Penelope was 22 years old and Richard was 40 when they married. A marriage in late 1648 or early 1649 would give them 20 years to have all their children, the youngest of whom, David, usually being claimed to have been born about 1669.

"And the Peach War of 1655. In those circumstances do you think it likely that a fourteen-year-old boy knew how to handle a musket?"

my answer to that is, yes. I have ancestors who were as young as 13 serving in The Rev. War and the Civil War so to think that a 14 year old in 1655 knew how to handle a musket, I would have to say, yes they could and probably very well.

I am curious what do you have as the birth years of all of their children?

Nick has already brought up this point, but it was common for Dutch women to retain a family name, and not use their spouse's name. It would also be possible that the person recording the events might use the name he was used to, rather than her newly married name.

Which is to say the use of Principe in the deposition doesn't qualify as a solid clue.